Israeli Lawmaker: Obama Has ‘Not Been a Friend of Israel’

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JERUSALEM (TheBlaze/AP) — A lawmaker from the Israeli prime minister’s party is in the United States ahead of the presidential election — and he’s speaking his mind.

Rather than shying away from addressing controversial policy disagreements he has with President Barack Obama, he said today that the president has “not been a friend of Israel” and that his administration doesn’t understand some of the issues that are at play in the Middle East.

Danny Danon, chairman of Likud’s international outreach branch, said in Chicago on Tuesday that Obama’s policies have been “catastrophic.”

He also says he is not interfering in the presidential race but merely stating his personal opinion. He has previously praised Republican candidate Mitt Romney.

Danon said he will also travel to Florida and New York to promote his new book, “Israel: The Will to Prevail,” and to meet with Republican and Democratic leaders. Philly.com has more about one of the arguments presented in Danon’s controversial book:

Danon’s argument is simple: About 40 years of U.S. attempts by Obama and previous presidents to broker a peace in the Mideast that includes a Palestinian state have failed and should be abandoned. “Being a member of a group,” he writes, “does not ipso facto mean you should have a state.” He proposes, instead, a “three-state solution. This would entail a regional agreement with Jordan, Egypt, and Israel that would give Palestinians land and other rights across these areas – not land to form a distinct Palestinian state.”

Last month, the Israeli politician also took aim at the Obama administration’s Iran policy, calling it a failure that has yielded poor results. Rather than preventing the Middle Eastern nation from recognizing its nuclear goals, the U.S. government’s current policies have purportedly done little to temper the situation.

“It is a failure because you look at the results and you don’t give a grade A for effort, and the result is that Iranians continue to build the reactors, Ahmadinejad is coming to the U.N. every year,” Danon said in an interview with Newsmax.TV. “He’s actually laughing at us because we talk, we write reports, but he goes back to Iran and he’s continued with enriching of the uranium and building their reactors.”

The politician’s most recent comments could be embarrassing to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been trying to shed accusations that he favors his longtime friend Romney in the race for the White House.